It is common in the industry of building construction, that architects or other design personnel draw up construction blueprints or plans either by hand or on a computer aided design (CAD) system. Such blueprints or working drawings include a general or primary plan drawing with supporting pages of detailed, secondary drawings supplementing and referencing the primary building drawing, i.e., floor plans, sectional, etc., along with supporting textual specifications. The detailed drawings provide more specific information for various portions or areas from the primary plan drawing. For bidding and estimating on a project, a single company distributes rolls of microfiche of the blueprint drawings or building plans in their entirety. Selective drawings of specified plans on the microfiche are then viewed to provide estimate proposals thereon. Though a contractor may be interested in only one particular portion of the building, the contractor must search through all the plans in order obtain the drawings for the particular portion. Obviously, this type of system provides for difficulty in handling the drawing and consumption of time in flipping through all the drawings.
It has been known in the art to input information into a computer for cost estimating analysis and reporting. Common computer systems may provide costs of material and provide reports thereof based on construction information specifically put into the computer. An example of such capability is illustrated in U.S. Pat. No. 5,189,606, issued Feb. 23, 1993 in the name of Burns et al.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,964,060, issued Oct. 16, 1990 in the name of Hartsog discloses a building test system which reviews building plans in view of required standards, such as zoning codes and regulations. U.S. Pat. No. 4,885,694, issued Dec. 5, 1989 in the name of Pray et al discloses an automated building control design system. The system is a computer base system for substantially automating the designs of a building control system, such as electronics, heating, etc.
Other patents using graphics include the following. U.S. Pat. No. 5,255,207, issued to Cornwell discloses a method for designing and detailing cabinets which allow a user to design cabinet structure by standard cabinet designs and to modify or override standard designs as desired. The program also allows the cost of the materials of the cabinets to be produced based on the design. U.S. Pat. No. 5,111,392, issued to Malin discloses a system for creating furniture layouts which utilizes standard furniture pieces. The finish, color and fabric may be separately determined for the furniture layout and pieces. Cost and bill of materials may be automatically produced based on the designed layout. U.S. Pat. No. 5,299,307 to Young discloses a method of manipulating objects as to their size, dimension, location and positioning on the computer. U.S. Pat. No. 5,319,541 issued to Blanchard et al discloses a computer for aiding in the selection of roof systems and the specifications therefore. The roofing system is selected from various data entered by the user and specifications are generated based on by applying a matrix. The prior art failed to disclose utilization of architectural blueprint drawings which are input into the system with a dimension or scale associated therewith, and take off is obtained therefrom simply by manipulation thereof in order to subsequently associate quantity of material and pricing therewith.
None of the prior art systems allow the manipulation of blueprint drawing plans in existence by automatically and electronically viewing the drawing and allowing calculation of measurements and quality totals of parts.